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Commander arrested for mass rapes

Published:Thursday | October 7, 2010 | 12:00 AM
A man walks with his children as a Congolese soldier stand guard in the small village of Walikale, Congo, on September 19. First, the rebel soldiers told residents of the villages in the mineral-rich eastern Congo not to worry. They were just there for a rest and would do no harm. But as dusk fell, the fighters encircled five villages simultaneously, and the gang rapes began. - AP photo

JOHANNESBURG (AP):

United Nations (UN) officials celebrated the arrest of a Congolese militia commander accused in mass rapes of more than 300 people, but it was an easy and rare catch, the man had been handed over by his fellow fighters.

Sadoke Kokunda Mayele is accused of leading some 200 fighters in the atrocities in eastern Congo, but he fell foul of his Mai-Mai militia because his own leader's family members were among those assaulted.

"His group claimed that he had tarnished their name and that whatever he did was not under their instructions and that they wanted to get rid of him," Hiroute Guebre Sellassie, head of the UN mission in Congo's North Kivu province, said in a telephone interview yesterday.

Mayele was handed over on Tuesday by his comrades-in-arms at Irameso, the UN official said. Irameso is among several mining villages in the Walikale district that are controlled by rebels. Congo's massive mineral resources long have fuelled the conflict in eastern Congo.

The United Nations said 303 civilians, 235 women, 13 men, 52 girls and 3 boys, were raped in 13 villages between July 30 and August 2. Even in eastern Congo, where rape has become a daily hazard and some women have been sexually assaulted repeatedly over the years, such numbers are shocking.

Margot Wallstrom, responsible for UN efforts to combat sexual violence in conflict, called Mayele's arrest "a victory for justice" and "a signal to all perpetrators of sexual violence that impunity for these types of crimes is not accepted and that justice will prevail".